Voices of Resilience

Celebrating Strength, Stories, and Struggles: An Interview on the Resilience of Romani Women

by Francesca Muratori

In the initial segment of our interview, I engaged in an insightful conversation with Urania Rapti, a psychologist, trainer, and mentor. Our discussion delved into the present conditions faced by Roma women, with a particular focus on the Dendropotamos neighborhood in Thessaloníki. Leveraging her extensive two-decade expertise in this domain, our dialogue provided a wealth of valuable insights on a topic that continues to spark debate.

First, would you define this society patriarchal or matriarchal?

It is patriarchal culture, when a couple gets married, the young bride leave their family and go to live with the family of the husband, even in words she will became the daughter of his family, in this way if you are an old woman and your first son brings you a bride, then you have power, it’s like being the mother of the king, you are not the king but you are the person that influences so in a way not on the wedding but when your son would be an adult, even if it’s father is alive, he will be perceived as the head of the family so now you have power as a woman. That means that traditionally speaking girls are getting married very young, now something is changing, we don’t have marriages of 10 years old but the farther you are from the urban context the lower you get married. In Dendropotamos nowadays girls are getting married at the ages of 17/18/20s, extremely young, but in the ghetto you can see brides at the age of 14-15, also it has to do with the low virginity beings that is still active, as it was in the Greek society but not now, so the full honor of the family has to do with the daughter being married as virgin and this is why in the traditional wedding they will take the bed linen with the blood, put it in the basket with flowers and they will dance with it, until they give it to the mother of the bride, it’s an honor, it’s a good family that raised a good girl. So, these things make the girls married younger than what they would have chosen themselves also because modern girls, used to live in another way, as a non-roman, have so much more freedom. Luckily as years grow and more women emancipated and become stronger and these things changed but it still depends on where you are, and in which community you are in. In some communities you can find women married at 25 or also women that don’t want to get married, like for example Eleni.

And how is it perceived nowadays?

Eleni in general is a young woman that broke many barriers but also, she comes from a very open-minded family, so she has the support of her parents, which has been very helpful. And when you have women like her, then younger girls understand that they can have choices, or even negotiate if someone brings and arrange marriage to them, they can discuss with their parents and say, “I don’t want to do that in this way”. Also, for this reason many girls decided to finish school earlier, because it is a deep tradition and it was the same within Greek society some decades ago, but even now, society usually thinks that a woman is fulfilled when she becomes a mother, like it is her role in life.

So why should a woman need education? Do you think that over the years the female educational model has changed?

We have to remember that until 50 years ago, in the rest of Greek society, girls finished their education at the end of the elementary school because then you need to know how to be a bride, how to have children and so you do not need to study. So, as you can understand in a marginalized society things have worked and will walk slowly also because you are marginalized.

On the other side we have to recognize that in the last 20 years a lot of things have changed. You can see Romani women with degrees, that are doing PHD, that are nurses or teachers. For example, Eleni is a nurse with extra training, and she is working for the municipality, Maria Paloma was successful in the first exam and now she will study with a scholarship, another Eleni is living in Athens, and she is finishing Balkan studies and other girls in the Dendropotamos are receiving scholarship through Faros. Now they choose what to do and set an example for the younger one.

For example, Eleni’s niece, Catherina, is 10 and if you hear her speaking, you say “Oh my god, she is a workshop of empowerment on her own?” She hasn’t decided if she wants to study agriculture, if she wants to be a vet doctor or a lawyer, and she is only ten. She thinks that all the three jobs are very important, and she doesn’t know which one of them she will do. And she came with us when we went to the ghetto, and she was explaining why children should be in school, and how it changes and helps you, and she is only ten. Of course, she is in a very empowering family setting, but she also sees how traditional women live and also how other women do, so she is choosing for herself and she is dreaming her path. So, things are changing, in Athens way more, but also in other parts some changes are going on.

We must also take into consideration the rest of reality, we still have a ghetto settlement, and their conditions are very hard. For example, even families that are very open minded have married their daughters at the age of 14-15, and once I posed the question “Why you? You seem very supportive and open-minded” and they answer, “yes but you know where we live, so wouldn’t do you think would been better to make sure that she is in a good family that we also know and be sure that she will be treated nicely from her husband than risking her being given attacked”. And the most important thing in the answer is “You know where we live”.

You have to think that these people are living in favelas settlements, they don’t have a proper house, they don’t have electricity, no running water, the family really struggles to survive, so also women do not have any aspirations. The other issue is that a lot of Greek schools that don’t really welcoming them, there are exceptions like in Dendropotamos, but in general Greek schools don’t want them because they have the same stereotypes as: “Roma people don’t want to be integrate” or they don’t understand the settlement where they have to live. If you live in a place where there is no running water, no electricity and your parents are illiterate then you cannot do your homework and be helped or also you are unable because at some point it will be dark and without light you cannot study. So, in the end it’s not their fault but people think that they don’t like school and do not understand that all the decisions related to education are affected also by the environment you are surrounded by.

How important is the figure of the woman in maintaining Roma identity? And what is the role of women within the community?

The girls are last in the hierarchy, usually what they know well is how to be perfect housewives, how to cook, clean, take care of a child and of an elder, some of them they don’t even have ambition, they only want to be mother and to stay in the house. But it also makes sense, because around them everyone is living in this way, some of them want to either exit the ghetto community unless they would go to the hospital, and are always escorted, never by themselves, and they don’t have different examples. To change your idea, you have to meet women that have decided to do something different, if you don’t meet them or even if they only visit you, for you they are an exception, but you think “every rule has an exception, I cannot”.

We have to remember that the culture that surrounds you defines your path. Everything depends also on how and where you grow up. If you are in an environment that teaches you that after junior school you have to stop studying and stay at home and work, get married or have children, you certainly think that it’s the only role that you can fit. This situation also affects your dreams, if society expects from me to become only a hairdresser or a cook and that doesn’t matter if deep inside, I want to be a teacher, I start to believe that I can’t do it. So, in their setting, it’s so difficult to dream, maybe you dream when you’re young but then your dreams will be put aside.

What do you think most needs to change and what would you really like to see changed?

The worst thing in this experience is in fact that they may tell you their dreams and you see in their eyes that they don’t even believe in them, and so the best way to empower them, since the social change walks very slowly is to bring them in contact with other Roma women that had succeeded. In the ghetto settlement there is for example a woman that is not from there, she is a hairdresser herself by school of hairdresser, she has opened a small hairdresser salon, and she is working in the ghetto. The fact that the young ladies see her studying and then she has decided to do something there, is something that can change their mentality.

It’s so important to empower women, to help them in the change, also because they want and they need help, since in a marginalized society everything walks so much slower.

The idea is to help them understand that there is something that you can do because in this ghetto setting things are still very hard. We have to say that things are better in general but not that much, even when women succeed some of them question their ethics and what we try to do when we have this group of young women and also mothers is to help them understand that going to school can actually help you build your ethics and also fortify yourself to stand for yourself. Education would help you as a person not only to succeed in your study. Some of them will upload and see them as role women and say to the girls “Look you can be like them”, also might say “no they are not living as they should, they are changing the course of action”. Georgia is a single mother, she is separated, some of them will support her choice others might say “she destroys her family, and obviously is because she went to the university, she is responsible for that”; and for this reason, a lot of women who manage to take a different path think often to quit, to return home.

So, have you seen any changes during all your years of experience?

Yes, if 25 years ago when I started as a volunteer in the community, there was not a single woman with a degree, no one finished high school, now you will find women that finish high school, older women that go back to the second chance school, some of them older, like the president of the Women Association. She was telling me that every afternoon she was preparing to go to school, it was not easy and there were young kids’ boys and girls, who were asking “aunty, where are you going?” “school”

“Why” “because I like school and I wasn’t smart enough when I was a child and I dropped out”. So, the idea that they value older women that they respect, value education, also helps them stay in school. If their mothers go to second chance school, then children will never drop out or even better if their mother has finished school without dropping out, you will study, you will also be a student and you will never think of leaving school, and also your children will never drop out. And that changes also in the way women are differently perceived and respected. So, it’s so important to empower women, to help them in the change, also because they want and they need help, since in a marginalized society everything walks so much slower.

What do you think are the steps needed to change something and lead to the integration of this community and in particular the women of this community?

I think it is so important to work with the community, to empower the community, to empower initiatives like Faros, that are doing amazing work as also giving scholarships to girls. But also, we need to educate the dominant society, because in the end as adults they will have to be with the dominant society. There are places like Kherel (a Romani bar in Thessaloniki) that also provide work to non-roman communities, it’s in an amazing social enterprise solidarity. But the local community there was not happy at all, because they are gypsies or they are doubtful, they trust all the stereotypes. So in the end they will have to face society. We need to educate the rest, in every society to understand, and at first to bring them in contact, to identi- fy that the struggle is similar. We also have to train the experts, teachers, doctors, they need to know how to treat them. But if we train the doctor and also the teacher and the public servants, and empower them in parallel, it would enhance a little bit the velocity of social change. It won’t be able to be a sprint, but we will have a chance. If we struggle even if we are privileged and we have the possibility to affirm ourselves, imagine women that are back in time compared to us, because they come from a marginalized society, how much effort we need, how much help.

In the follow-up segment of the interview, I had the honor of engaging in a discussion with Maria Paloma, a 19-year-old resident of Dendropotamos. Maria is among the remarkable young individuals actively contributing to the ongoing transformation within the Roma community.

Which is your personal experience in the community and what is the role of the women within the community?

Maybe in other societies women are equal to men, but in the Roma community women are not considered equal, we can say that the Roma community is still a patriarchal environment.

Do you think that something has changed?

We are very behind, we made and we’re still making small steps, but we are the future, and we can manage changes.

How being a Roma woman affects you in different environments also outside of the Roma community? Have you faced a lot of stereotypes?

The people outside the neighborhood at the moment know about us, about our origin, and change their positive perception of us.

Do you think something is changing within the community? How important is education in this process?

At least we have the stereotypes, women have to face this situation in the house and also outside the house, but the women, the teenagers now, are more powerful and they fight for what they want. They had too many pressures about the opinion of their family, usually families want them to drop out of their studies, but they try to keep going and continue to study.

Do you have a role model that you follow from the community?

We have a lot of role models in Dendropotamos but personally I don’t find anyone.

What is your dream job?

My dream job is to be policewoman, because I want to do something very different from what my parents do, and I want to help the community and change something.

Have you ever thought about leaving your community?

Personally, I want to participate in the community of Roma, but I don’t want my children to have any working experience within the community because it would be very dangerous for them. I don’t want my children to grow up in the community because, living constantly in the face of danger, I fear that they will underestimate it and consequently lose the perception of danger and consider it as normality you know when you see a monster every day you stop to be scared but you become like the monster.

Which is the most emotionally difficult discrimination that you have experienced?

I don’t want to say something that hurts me, I want to tell you something that gave me so much power. I believe that young people want to change things, want to change the Roma environment but they don’t know how to talk with their families. The same person who tells me “Stop doing what you’re doing, because it’s something not for Roma people, we are not for knowledge” it is the same person that in few days asks me “How it’s going on with your university?”, and this person waits anxiously to know how my exams are going, to take also from me power and inspiration.

Maria Paloma

Do you feel the influence of your community or of the tradition to follow a specific path? Was it difficult to follow your own path?

When I was in high school, I believed in myself and I was sure to go on with my studies but my parents said to me “ you must stop, be- cause the school will not give you something, and if you continue to go to school you would shame us as a family” and my close family said to me “ what status will give you the fact to go to school, what will you do without being married?” . But I show to my family that if I want something I can reach my objective, and now part of my family supports me as they can.

What is the thing that you would like to change the most within society?

I want to change the way of thinking of a lot of people inside the Dendropotamos community, and I want let parents understand that the school is important, that if the kids don’t go to school they cannot change their future and also the Dendropotamos future and the new generation and adolescents to take good models who can be powerful for them and could help them in following their own dreams